Why the Real Christopher Robin Hated 'Pooh'

The new trailer for Goodbye Christopher Robinfocuses on the happiness A.A. Milne's Winnie the Pooh books brought to a ravaged England after World War I, but personally, the stuffed-animal-inspired series was a source of great strife for the author and his son, the real-life Christopher Robin.

Christopher Robin Milne was born in Chelsea, London, on Aug. 21, 1920, just 21 months after the Great War ended. He was the first and only child born to former British Army officer Alan Alexander Milne and his wife Daphne de Sélincourt. His father, a screenwriter and novelist by trade, drew inspiration from Christopher's stuffed animals, particularly a teddy bear named Edward (the name "Winnie" came from a bear they saw at the London Zoo), to create stories about the friends' adventures in the Hundred Acre Wood. The first book, a collection of children's poems titled When We Were Very Young, came out in 1924, shortly after Christopher Robin's fourth birthday. It sold more than 50,000 copies in eight weeks, according to the Telegraph.

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A.A. Milne and son Christopher Robin and his teddy bear in 1926

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Looking back on his early childhood, Christopher told writer Gyles Brandreth his father was "not good with children" and was mostly absent, either working or at London's esteemed Garrick Club. His mother, meanwhile, insisted on dressing him in "girlish" clothes and keeping his hair below his ears, a style that was odd even for the time. Christopher's closest confidant was his nanny, Olive Rand, who was with him for more than 8 years.

Christopher Robin and his mother in 1926

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The fourth and final Pooh title, The House at Pooh Corner, published in October 1928. By then, each book was selling hundreds of thousands of copies worldwide. As the series' popularity grew, so did Christopher Milne's resentment of it. Jealous classmates bullied and taunted Christopher, who responded by taking boxing lessons to learn how to defend himself. Entering boarding school at age 9, Christopher Robin had a full-fledged "love-hate relationship with my fictional namesake" that continued into adulthood, he wrote in his 1974 memoir The Enchanted Places.

"At home I still liked him, indeed felt at times quite proud that I shared his name and was able to bask in some of his glory. At school, however, I began to dislike him, and I found myself disliking him more and more the older I got," Christopher wrote.

A first edition Winnie-the-Pooh book with characters from a 1930

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Father and son forged a semblance of a relationship during Christopher's adolescence, bonding over algebra problems and crossword puzzles when the younger Milne was at home on breaks, but that foundation crumbled once Christopher left for college at Cambridge. After serving in World War II and finishing his degree, Christopher, then in his mid-twenties, failed to find fulfilling work. He wasn't living up to his "household name."

The troubling period solidified his resentment towards A.A. He believed, he would later reveal, that his father "had got where he was by climbing on my infant shoulders, that he had filched from me my good name and had left me with nothing but the empty fame of being his son."

Christopher Robin and fiancee Lesley de Selincourt in 1948

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Christopher probably would have grown even more bitter if he hadn't met his future wife, who also happened to be his first cousin, at age 27. Mrs. Milne disapproved of Christopher and Lesley's relationship because she and her brother, Lesley's father, had been estranged for 30 years. The couple married months later, nonetheless, and opened a bookshop together.

Writing his memoirs seemed cathartic for Christopher—"Believe it or not, I can look at those four [Winnie-the-Pooh] books without flinching," he said at age 60—but he never truly reconciled with his parents. He visited his father occasionally in the author's last years, but after A.A. Milne died, Christopher only saw his mother once in the remaining 15 years she lived past her husband's death. Even on her deathbed, according to the Oxford Biography Index, Daphne Milne refused to see her only son.

Christopher Milne at the unveiling of a statue in honor of his father at the London Zoo in 1981

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Christopher became friends with Brandreth, who was writing a musical about the elder Milne, in 1980. He told the writer that he wasn't angry anymore, that he'd said goodbye to his parents "long ago." He even parted ways with the friends who'd started it all—his childhood toys Pooh, Piglet, Tigger, Eeyore, and Kanga—in 1947 when he gave them to the New York Public Library, where they remained on display for 20 years. "I like to have around me the things I like today, not the things I once liked many years ago," he said. Despite the resentment and feelings of inadequacy that plagued Christopher for much of his life, Brandweth wrote that he believed his friend "was happy and fulfilled" at the time of his death in 1996.

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